What’s a wobble board?
As actress Emmanuelle Vaugier found, it’s a fun way to get fit and firm all over.
Self, October 2003

At age 19, Vancouver native and skier Emmanuelle Vaugier made a discovery: “I realized I enjoyed the hot tub more than bundling up to hit the slopes,” she says with a laugh. Now, the 27-year-old actress, who plays Dr. Helen Bryce on The WB’s Smallville and Princess Jasmine in the new movie Secondhand Lions gets her six weekly workouts from warmer pursuits near her Los Angeles home. Her favorite new activity: Reebok Core Training at Crunch Fitness in West Hollywood. The 60-minute class is packed with tough toning moves done on the Reebok Core Board (that’s the gadget she’s standing on here), often while swinging a medicine ball or hefting weights and balancing on one leg. This updated version of a wobble board twists and tilts with your movements, so it’s like working out on a rocking ship. “It’s hard, but I loved how it challenged my body in new ways. I was completely sore the next day! “ Vaugier says. That soreness didn’t surprise instructor Yumi Lee. “You’re working your abs even while doing a bicep curl,” she says.

Vaugier mixes up her routine with treadmill and elliptical workouts and hikes with her dogs. “The combination targets all your muscles,” she says. “That results in the ideal body-shapely but firm.” Curves, she’s happy to observe, are back in style in Hollywood. “I like to have a butt,” she says. “I just don’t want a flabby butt!”

Written by Shelley Levitt